Moving notes and documents off US-hosted services: what it costs and what it does not buy

Did this properly over a few months. It is more achievable than it looks and it buys less than people assume, so it is worth being clear about both.

What is straightforward

• Notes, documents and file sync all have mature European-hosted options. Feature parity is close and the gaps are collaboration polish rather than anything structural.
• Email and calendar are well covered.
• Migration is mostly an export and an import. The formats are open enough.

What is genuinely worse

• Real-time collaborative editing. This is the one place the gap is still obvious.
• Mobile apps are usually a step behind, and background sync is the weak point.
• Search across a large archive is slower and less clever.

What it does not buy
Where the servers sit is not the same as which laws reach the company. A provider incorporated in one place with disks in another can be reachable by both. If that is the actual concern, the question is corporate structure and ownership, not the data centre map, and the marketing pages talk about the second because it is easier.

The version that ends the question: host it yourself, at which point the answer is unambiguous and you have swapped a legal question for an operational one. That is a real trade, not a free win.